


festis bei umo canavarum

by CountessKlair



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Inquisition party members aren't such assholes in this universe because I SAID SO, M/M, Multi, Mutual Pining, Nightmares, PHYSICAL CONTACT AND COMFORT IS GOOD, POLY RELATIONSHIPS FOR THE WIN!, POV Cullen Rutherford, Pre-Slash, because i refuse to believe that a magic fantasy land, im not touch starved youre touch starved, is because he cuddles with consenting adults, is both homophobic and polyphobic, listen i headcanon that the reason my adaar isnt all murdery and rampagey, sleepy inquisition is the best inquisition, the three of them will be happily married to each other in the future
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-06
Updated: 2020-02-24
Packaged: 2021-02-27 04:08:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,542
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22150816
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CountessKlair/pseuds/CountessKlair
Summary: Cullen has had bad dreams for years, even before he stopped taking lyrium. But now that he no longer takes it, now that he has things that mean more than he could have ever dreamed, they're so much worse.((Warning, I recently expanded the universe this is set in, and as soon as the rest of the fic is finished I will be taking this down and then putting up the full fic in its place, this will be in one of the chapters))
Relationships: Dorian Pavus/Cullen Rutherford, Male Adaar/Cullen Rutherford, Male Adaar/Dorian Pavus, Male Adaar/Dorian Pavus/Cullen Rutherford, Male Inquisitor/Dorian Pavus/Cullen Rutherford
Kudos: 37





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> ok this is PRE slash, but in this universe, a method for Tal-Vashoth to keep from going all rampagey is-literally-to cuddle it away with trusted friends who consent. (touch and companionship is important fight me) and when my inky, Asala Adaar, told them about it they were basically like "oookay if it helps?" and now that they're in Skyhold and are friends there's lots of hugs because I SAID SO. Then, Cullen got sick from that stupid hole in his dumb roof (who signed off on that? Come on) and his nightmares were so bad he literally fell out of his bedroom into his office and it was just pure luck that Leliana and my Inky Asala, were dropping off reports and food for him. So when the two of them discovered that he was SICK how DARE he hide it from them, the nightmares were that bad, and that there was more roof GONE than THERE, Asala moved Cullen into his Inquisitor quarters for better recovery and to keep an eye on him from a rocking chair near the bed. They graduated to sleeping in the same bed when Dorian caught the same sickness and Asala strugged with keeping them both IN bed and not OUT of it because Cullen had nightmares and Dorian had fever hallucinations. And then they discovered they slept really good and felt soooo much better in the same bed, so PLATONICALLY they continue to do it. All three of them have feelings but they're big dumb boys who haven't talked about it yet. Also, this is Cullen's pov because first person is the only one i understand.

I blinked, clearing the dust of old books in the Circle’s library back at Kirkwall. 

Not back. There wasn’t a Back or a Before or an After.

I was in the library of the Circle at Kirkwall. The Templar armor hung, a familiar weight. Someone quietly hummed as they studied, a few groups talked amongst themselves, some voices bored, some cheerful, some irritated. The atmosphere held no air of danger, no brittle line holding everything in place, and for a moment that was surprising, even alarming and concerning, but then it faded when I couldn’t remember why. 

I kept to my duties, going around the library, checking up with some of the mages who frowned a little too hard at what they were reading, a frustration of trying to understand. 

The hours passed, and as they did I passed along a soft reminder to Lydia not to forget lunch, a gentle joke to Edgar and Ryhal. Faces blurred when I looked away but were familiar when their eyes meet mine.

I noticed faintly, somewhere in the back of my head, that all of their eyes were the same shade of grey. Strange, because I though Lydia’s eyes were blue, but the thought passed quickly enough.

I rounded a corner in the maze-like library and stumbled upon a Qunari. His back was turned to me as he shuffled through the shelves, slow and silent in a way that was familiar, but I forgot about why remembering what that meant was important when the Qunari man straightened and the low blue light of magic glow orbs illuminating the shelves glinted off of the gold horn coverings on his curled horns, etched with runes of protection and luck. There was a shock of deja-vu at the sight that gave me pause and I looked more carefully. 

The Qunari man had long, snow white hair spilled down his back, sprinkled with a few intricate and delicate braids among strands my fingers knew felt like silk, and even though his back was to me I still knew those braids framed smooth, hematite colored skin and his square, kind face as he would smile with verdant green eyes too green somehow but still open and honest and-

I knew him. 

“Asala?” 

The name came unbidden, not really remembered until I said it, but yes, it was him. That was his name. 

“Asala!” I called, running over to greet him as he turned towards me. “I’m so glad to see you, I-”

My voice died in my throat when I finally got a good look at him, his eyes meeting mine.

His green eyes weren’t rich with life and humor and curiosity, like they were supposed to be. They were dull and placid and still. His mouth wasn’t curved in fondness or easy laughter like it usually was, instead his mouth was just as placid and still as his eyes, oh god his eyes why weren’t they speaking the way they always did saying words his mouth didn’t?

“Asala?” I asked, my voice softer, afraid. 

Something buzzed in the back of my mind, something screaming unknown words, feelings of desperation and terror and sorrow and overwhelming guilt. The impression of hands reaching out for comfort in an almost too-warm body. Not his, not mine. A third. Something missing, beyond what was missing from within the mage before me.

Asala blinked slowly at me, and that was when I was able to look past what I couldn’t find in his eyes to the orange flaming sun branded on his forehead. 

Dread filled me and weighed me down like stones in my belly, froze my blood and my heart raced, choking me. 

“No, not you,” I begged, to him and to the Maker and to the Makers bride he was said to serve and to no one because there was no one else to scream it to.

The Templar shield I held fell to the ground. The armor was heavier now, too heavy, and suddenly the library filled with the smell of lyrium, taunting me. 

“Not you,” I said as I reached for Asala, ripped off gloves to hold his too-cool skin in my hands, begged, “Never you. Why? Why did they do this?”

Asala studied me. His gaze was blank and barren. Then, he said in a voice that was undeniably his but without what made him _him_ in it, “I remember you.”

The panic grew as I clutched at him. The walls and books started to grow dark, looming and bowed threateningly in towards us.

One by one the magic glow orbs lighting the library sniffed out in a red flame.

The faint scent memory of ash and embers tickled the uncertain darkness in the back of my mind, that elusive third figure snapped into focus as I called desperately, “Dorian!”

Asala was here, but Dorian, where was Dorian, if they’d done this to Asala what did they do to Dorian?

There was only the faintest shade of recognition in Asala’s eyes as he replied, “I remember Dorian.”

The blue light of the magic glow orbs was gone, replaced with a creeping red shadow from the baseboards, a faint haunting song emanated from it.

“Where?” I cried, fingers biting too hard into Asala’s flesh, the wild desperate thought of dragging the real him back to me, of dragging him and Dorian away from here the only clear thing in my mind. “Where is Dorian?”

There was no emotion in Asala’s usually expressive face, nothing of _him_ in him. “Dead.”

I couldn’t speak. Not Dorian, he never...I never…

This was not the Circle in Kirkwall, it couldn’t be, but it was, shadows grown dark and cobwebs thick, rot growing in the cracks between stone and pages.

The melody coming from the red glow that grew brighter and louder and faster each moment. So much like lyrium but louder and stranger and undeniably, lethally threatening.

Asala stood still even as I was panick-stricken, he was placid and pliant, those empty eyes back on mine. “I remember that I loved you.”

The red melody was almost at a fever pitch, something black laughed wryly in the darkness, the smell of lyrium tainted and overpowering. 

Asala said, unconcerned and unrecognizable, “I do not remember why I loved you.”

“NO!”

I reached out but my hand caught on air. Different air. Cool but not cutting, moving and not stale.

The library was gone, Asala was gone, what-

“Hey, easy,” a voice said, soothing and rough. 

His voice. His _real_ voice, full of his compassion and care and that edge of concern that came from his protective instincts. 

“We’re here,” a different voice, but one just as precious. Velvet and silk.

Asala. Dorian. 

“Dream,” I gasped to myself, “Just a dream.”

One huge hand was clasped around my waist from where I was sitting up in Asala’s bed. Asala’s hand.

That was right, I’d chosen to bunk in his quarters. As I had since we’d come to this arrangement on a platonic ground after I’d fallen so ill last month, and now that we were all healthy and had actually gotten decent sleep for probably the first time in recent years, we’d kept doing it. Surprisingly, the gossip around Skyhold had hardly even acknowledged it.

The Inquisition forces were willing to give their Herald anything for an easy night’s sleep, even if it came from a mage born and raised in the Imperium.

A smaller hand was tangled with mine, the one I hadn’t used to reach out with in sleep. Dorian.

The two of them rubbed soothing circles with their thumbs, voices giving wordless soothes and coos, urging me to lie back down. 

I did, curled my hands tightly, too tightly, with theirs. 

It was a while before my breathing eased and the shaking stopped, Dorian occasionally humming a piece of a song Maryden penned. The name of it slipped through my frazzled mind. 

Asala let go of my hand, but only to wrap his arms around me and tuck me under his chin, my back flush with the broad heat of his chest. 

Dorian moved in closer too, taking both of my hands and pressing his forehead to mine. 

It should have felt stifling, but my blood and my bones were still icy with what my dream had showed me. 

“You can tell us.” Asala offered. His voice rumbled like distant thunder, a small earthtremor against my back and it felt so real, too real after the stillness and blankness of the dream that stupid tears filled my eyes for a moment. 

Dorian hummed at me. “Come along, Cullen. We’re already sleeping together, in a fashion. No sense in not baring our emotions if we aren’t baring our bodies.”

“Dorian,” Asala said, half chastising, half amused. 

Despite the...intimacy of our sleeping arrangements, nothing sexual had happened between any of the three of us. We all had so much to do and there never seemed to be time to breathe when the day was over, much less even think about...anything else. Not that I wasn’t aware of what I was certain I felt for them. For both of them.

I knew I’d been developing...feelings, for both of them, sexual and romantic, but...

“It was just a dream,” I said quietly. 

“Dreams can still hurt,” Dorian said. Too wise for his age, eyes that had seen too much, but still so much to learn.

I sighed, hoping neither of them commented on how much it sounded like a sob. 

But the only way this worked was if we actually told each other things. I wouldn’t do then the dishonor of refusing their help and comfort now. When they both had been so brave in the past with baring their souls to me and to each other. I was unable to do anything but take what they would give me. So I told them.

“I was in the Circle at Kirkwall. In the dream. I was a Templar again. Or maybe I was still a Templar, I’m not...” I trailed off, but too a deep breath ignored the tears trailing down my cheeks and the shaking of my ribs as I continued, “Everything was fine, like back before...before Knight-Captain Meredith went mad. Before the first real start of the tension ever broke out. It was just a normal day. I was in the library doing rounds, and I turned a corner and...”

I had to stop talking then. To close my eyes and to try to calm my racing heart. To let the breath caught in my lungs out and to control the shaking of my shoulders. Asala held me closer, rubbing his broad palm over my heart in a slow, calm circle. 

Barely comprehensible, I managed to choke out, “I saw you, Asala. I called out to you, and you turned around and you-you-”

Dorian held my hands tighter, an effort to ground me, pressed in tighter towards me to hear my voice as Asala pressed a little more firmly over my heart to try and soothe the pounding even a little.

“They’d made you Tranquil.” I spat like the curse it was, the dread I’d felt in the dream chilling me even now.

Dorian faltered. Asala froze up behind me, and though I couldn’t see it, I knew the two of them were speaking with their eyes.

The memory of what Asala had looked like, sounded like, as Tranquil...

What if that was his fate? The Inquisition was heretical in the eyes of the Chantry, and Asala was an apostate, a very powerful apostate who now ruled over things the monarchs of Thedas didn’t have even the combined authority to rule. I had seen what was done to those who rose too quickly and above what the powers that be beloved was their ‘proper’ station, and Dorian had been right when he had pessimistically warned Asala that no one would thank him for saving the world.

Dorian was right.

They wouldn’t thank him.

They would punish him.

How far they would go to punish him was the only real question left, and the thought of it... 

I barely managed, “You told me you didn’t remember why you...you cared about me. They’d made you Tranquil. You. You! It-Maker, I can’t...”

“Easy, Cullen,” Asala breathed, steady and safe, a shelter from the storm like always.

“I’m safe. You’re safe.” He said, arms warm, body solid and real.

“Dorian, you-” I tried but couldn’t get the words out.

That too was likely. Dorian was a mage from the Imperium. It was luck and only luck that the Inquisition tolerated him even in the most anti-Tevinter circles, and that was only because they adored Asala and trusted his judgment nearly implicitly. When this was all over, when they had time to remember Dorian’s origins, he would be a refugee in unfriendly territory, he would...they could... 

“Hush now,” Dorian chided gently. “I’m safe too, and nothing and no one is going to get to us here.”

There was a gentle pressure against my ear, and I knew it wasn’t but the foolish heart of a romantic inside of me believed it was Asala pressing a feather-light kiss to my ear. 

“Rest, Cullen.” Asala rumbled, voice warm and sleep rough, “Close your eyes and breathe. The world is safe tonight. We are here.”

Dorian hummed, ever musical. “Try to sleep, he says. I hear you southerners count sheep before you can manage that, should I have a runner go and fetch some?”

I managed a chuckle, felt the tension in the lines of Dorian’s body ease. 

Asala’s hand lifted from my heart to cup Dorian’s face for a moment, skimming his thumb over Dorian’s cheekbone. I watched the dark shadow of his hand against the copper of Dorian’s skin, lit faintly by the firelight in the fireplace.

When Asala spoke again, his voice was even softer, rougher with his closeness to sleep. “We still have a few more hours. Let’s all try to get some rest.”

Dorian’s eyes rolled a little at the poorly concealed demand but still slipped closed obediently, his hands still curled tight with mine. 

Asala’s body cradled mine, tight without smothering, warm and solid.

Real.

I closed my eyes. Prayed.

_Maker, Andraste, protect them. Please. If it costs me my own life, let what I saw never come to pass. Let them live. Let them love. Let them feel._

There was no scent of lyrium as the wind from an open window rushed through the room. Just the spice of Dorian’s perfume, the burning of birch wood in the fireplace, the scent of snow on the mountains both from the window and what Asala seemed to carry on his skin and in his hair.

I settled further into the sheets. They were here. They were safe. And by the Maker, I’d keep it that way.


	2. Chapter 2

Hey heads up, I've expanded the universe this fic is set in, and shortly I will be deleting this fic. BUT, have no fear, for it will still be online, it'll just be in the other, much LONGER fic. so. Yeah. Thank you guys for the response and the Kudos, they're very much appreciated!!

**Author's Note:**

> title is Tevene for "You will be the death of me"
> 
> ((Warning, I recently expanded the universe this is set in, and as soon as the rest of the fic is finished I will be taking this down and then putting up the full fic in its place, this will be in one of the chapters))


End file.
